


postcards from purgatory

by delhuillier



Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: FFxivWrite2020, M/M, Tumblr: FFXIVwrite2020, absolutely not in chronological order, mute WoL
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-02
Updated: 2020-09-18
Packaged: 2021-03-06 20:08:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 11
Words: 12,005
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26254678
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/delhuillier/pseuds/delhuillier
Summary: Collection of my prompt entries for FFxivWrite2020.Will list warnings in the notes at the beginning of each chapter if necessary.prompt #15: ache"With each sign he learns here he feels ever more distant from his home. From the Steppe. With each sign he learns here, more of a liar he becomes—someone not worthy of the trust Amha’li, and Alphinaud, and the other Scions give him..."
Relationships: Retainers/Warrior of Light (Final Fantasy XIV)
Kudos: 2





	1. starry-eyed

Amha’li rubs his hands together, and finding that does little to ward him against the Coerthan cold, raises them then to his mouth to blow on them. Better, but all too soon the wind rises once more to scour away what little warmth remains from the extremities he’d foolishly left exposed. He shivers. Gloves. What had possessed him to neglect bringing a pair of gloves?

He pushes on across the desolate stone square in The Pillars, ears pinned back against his head and tail tucked between his legs in an effort to keep the chill from them. No nobles wander this late in the evening—they had all done the sensible thing and retreated inside when the evening began to tighten its grip on the city. Apart from him, around the square there stand only watchful Temple Knights, shrouded in heavy armour and furs, and the guttering lamps futilely attempting to hold back the dark.

A short walk, it had seemed, when the innkeep had enumerated him the directions to the Athenaeum Astrologicum. And short it would be, indeed, a quarter-bell at the most; but Amha’li is quickly learning that if one did not dress appropriately for the cold in Ishgard, that quarter-bell could feel more like an eternity.

He clatters up the stairs to the Athenaeum and through its doors, as quickly as he can, plunging headfirst into the warmth within. The poor young astrologian at the table, roused so abruptly from a peaceful doze amongst their books, stares at him, wide-eyed and pale-faced; Amha’li spares a moment to apologise, to reassure them he means no harm—he is come here only to see one Master Qestir, and would you be so kind as to tell me where he is, if you know?

Once some measure of feeling has returned to his hands and face, he thanks the astrologian and follows their directions to the door to the roof of the Athenaeum. Up the stairs of dark wood, through a narrow stone corridor, and up still more, clanking up a tight metal spiral of steps crammed in a corner, he goes, and the nearer he draws to the roof, and to Arslan, the more the anticipation swells within his breast.

Only a few suns had it been since they last saw each other, but nowadays any time spent apart feels like too much. Ever since those agonising moons where it seemed as though Arslan had vanished from Eorzea.

Amha’li had believed, at first, that he had crossed too many boundaries in too short a time; that the Warrior of Light had finally realised that a silly little Keeper of the Moon with no wealth and no status was not worth his attention when he rubbed shoulders with so many more _august_ personages. Then, of course, came the gnawing fear that Arslan had met the ignominious end so many other adventurers did: gutted by some wild animal or bandit and left to bleed out malms away from civilisation. It was only later that he learned of the accusation, the late-night flight from Ul’dah to Coerthas and thence to Ishgard...

True to the astrologian’s word, Arslan is out on the Athenaeum’s roof, bent over a telescope, his star globe hanging in the air over an outstretched hand, wisps of ethereal light flickering into and out of existence around its golden lines. Amha’li pauses just outside the door to the roof to take him in: how regal he looks in that pale knee-length coat, worn open and lined with rich furs, and how the coat flatters his willowy form; how softly are his inky scales and fine features painted by the dim light from the brazier at his side. A sliver of the midnight sky stepped down from the firmament.

But what holds Amha’li’s gaze, now and always, are his eyes: how the narrow rings of yellow around his dark irises catch the light and throw it back, as though they possess a light all their own.

Arslan clearly hadn’t heard his arrival, too focussed is he on peering through the telescope and then making minute adjustments to the globe with his one ungloved hand. With each touch, the tiny motes of light clinging to the globe shift and change, grow brighter, or fade out entirely; and if Amha’li squints, he thinks he almost might see patterns in them. The flowing Ewer. The cluster that makes up The Bole. The distinctive cross of The Arrow.

Though Amha’li could watch him work for the rest of the night, he can also feel the cold creeping in again. So he says, “Arslan.”

‘Tis common amongst the Scions and amongst the Warriors’ (many) other admirers to refer to him as stoic, or withdrawn, a tome written in a language no one yet understands. And in truth, Amha’li has always found that gratifying to hear—because it means that few others have been allowed to see Arslan as Amha’li has seen him. Including the sweet smile Arslan offers him now.

“Amha’li,” Arslan says, forming the curved shape of the sign for _moon_ with one hand and the first letter of Amha’li’s name with the other, before letting _moon_ flow into another sign Amha’li hasn’t yet learned to recognise. The way Arslan lets the sign linger, so near his heart…

Ah, yes. As much as control as Amha’li has over his expression, he has much less over his ears and tail. He’s sure Arslan can read as much affection in his perked ears and quivering tail as Amha’li was able to read into the way Arslan said his name.

Amha’li deals with the embarrassment the only way he knows how: affected nonchalance. “It has been too long, Master Qestir. I hope you didn’t miss me too much.”

Of course, Arslan knows him too well for that to work. “Too much and more.”

“Really, you…” Amha’li strides forward, catches up Arslan’s ungloved hand in his own. The cold strives still to steal all feeling from his face, but the flush blooming in his cheeks is putting up quite the fight against it. “Come here.”

Arslan yields to him, allowing Amha’li to pull him into a tight embrace. As always, their difference—nearly a fulm and a half—in height makes things a little awkward, but Amha’li would have it no other way. Arslan’s arms around his shoulders, his tight around Arslan’s waist, his head tucked against Arslan’s chest. For the first time that night, he feels truly warm.

After a moment, they draw apart, though not too far; Amha’li’s hands still linger at Arslan’s waist, and Arslan’s rest lightly on his shoulders. Arslan’s smiling again, and though it is the barest hint of a curve to his lips, so soft and content is it that Amha’li can hardly believe it’s real. ‘Tis all a dream, surely.

(Though if it were a dream, Amha’li supposes there would be far less clothing involved.)

Arslan lifts his hands. “Would you…” He pauses, one of his hands briefly touching his face, then resumes. “Would you like to look at the stars? With me.”

“Oh, I don’t know…” Amha’li is unable to resist a bit of teasing. “Must we? Sometimes I feel as though you pay the stars more heed than you do me.”

“They are very beautiful.” Again, Arslan hesitates. “And...when I was a child, on the plains and...here...I would often turn to them for comfort—I would imagine myself in their place. So high above Hydaelyn nothing could touch me. Safe by Nhaama’s side.”

Amha’li is quiet. ‘Tis rare indeed to hear Arslan speak of his past on the Steppe (though it is not so rare for him to take such teasing so seriously), and rarer still for him to address the years he spent in the Brume as a child, and then teenager. Beyond a few oblique references like this one, Amha’li knows nothing at all about what truly happened to Arslan here when he was younger. But he could probably make a few guesses.

“But,” Arslan says, “now I have you.”

Oh, he does not play fair.

“And you are more beautiful than any—”

Amha’li takes his hands, holds them. “Please, Arslan.” He can hardly keep the stupid smile off his face. Not that that matters because of how his ears and tail current conspire to betray him anyway. “Have mercy.”

Feeling a blush threatening to rise in his cheeks once again, Amha’li turns his head, and his gaze finds the telescope. “Here—why don’t you show me what you were looking at before.”

They huddle together under Arslan’s coat, and Amha’li turns his gaze towards the heavens as Arslan instructs him. For a few hours, he is able to see the night sky as Arslan sees it: a place of refuge dazzling in its complexity; a guiding path, its malmstones the constellations wrought by the gods’ hands, set into the limitless black.

Maybe one day Arslan will get his wish: he’ll join the stars above, taken up by his goddess, Nhaama, into the heavens to be by her side.

If that happens, Amha’li hopes he’ll be able to go on that journey with him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thought process: crux -> the constellation -> hey, part of The Arrow resembles the real-world constellation -> ??? -> gratuitous stargazing fluff
> 
> The two signs Arslan uses in Amha'li's name sign (accompanied by the letter A) are 'moon' and 'god.' Yes, Arslan entirely intends the connection to Nhaama.
> 
> I have a headcanon that astrologians must needs periodically adjust their star globes to reflect the movement and alignment of the heavens, somewhat like an armillary sphere. That's what Arslan was doing.


	2. narr ehs

He is alone with the dragon.

Alphinaud and Aymeric have retreated several yalms, as they were bid by Hraesvelgr. A glance back at them shows Alphinaud with worry written in every angle of his body, his ramrod-straight back, the arms folded tightly across his chest; Aymeric himself, proving that decades of Church indoctrination are not quite so easy to shake as he had acted, has let a hand come to rest on the hilt of his sword, though that brings Arslan less comfort, not more.

Because being in Aymeric’s presence—in the presence of any Ishgardian knight—unsettles him, such that he can never quite be at ease. It rouses old memories that scrabble and scrape at the edge of his consciousness, eager indeed for the chance to sink their hooked claws into him, and it is all he can do to restrain them.

Nevertheless, why he merits such singular attention from the great wyrm escapes Arslan, at present. He has offered nothing to the negotiations between wyrm and man save using his own strength to win them these audiences with Hraesvelgr—and that he only did because Alphinaud asked it of him.

If Ishgard falls, so be it. It would be the natural end for a city built on slaughter and butchery.

“The movement of thy thoughts can I read plain in thine eyes, mortal. Thou art come here at the side of those who wish to preserve Ishgard from Nidhogg’s wrath, and yet you sharest not their convictions.”

Hraesvelgr’s gaze proves difficult to meet. For when he looks into those eyes, Arslan’s stomach twists with a feeling not unlike vertigo; he stands upon the brink of an abyss that extends back a thousand years, a thousand thousand years, poised to fall.

Still, Hraesvelgr wants an answer, and he will get it whether Arslan himself provides it or whether he plucks it from Arslan’s thoughts himself. At the very least, that the dragon can read his meaning from his thoughts ensures Arslan can be understood, for it is doubtful that Hraesvelgr would be able to interpret the Sharlayan signs Alphinaud insisted on teaching Arslan.

“I do not understand.”

“Thou hast little affection for the city of mortals. Wherefore then dost thou grant them thy protection?”

Arslan has no answer for that—not one that would satisfy Hraesvelgr, that is. Why, indeed. Because saying yes had always been easier than saying no? Because one truth he learned early in his life was that the only way for him to survive was to do what those with power required of him without complaint?

As long as Amha’li and the Scions are safe, nothing else matters. Arslan would do anything to keep them from harm, and if that meant abandoning Ishgard to the fate it richly deserved, or in the future surrendering to Garlemald, then he would not hesitate. But he senses that that is not what Hraesvelgr wishes to hear.

“I…”

Before he can even give form to the lie he was about to tell—some bromide about how the child ought not to suffer for the sins of the parent—a growl rolls through him, shaking him down to his very bones. He flinches, cowed into silence.

Hraesvelgr bares his teeth. “Thou wouldst attempt to deceive when thy mind is open to me?”

Arslan can hardly breathe; Hraesvelgr’s presence weighs on him, the power in it nearly suffocating. What had he done to rouse such ire in the wyrm?

“Forgive me—”

“Twice now hast thou lent thy strength to thy companions, that they might beg of me mine aid in their battle against Nidhogg’s shade. And many times more hast thou risked life and limb for the sake of a city for which thou holdest only contempt.”

Hraesvelgr puts his head closer to Arslan, close enough that his breath, frigid as the winds scouring the Coearthan mountaintops, chills Arslan to the bone. “Your companions would dare come to me and ask me to trust in the seed of man one last time, when beside them walketh one whose feelings echo Nidhogg’s own? I know thou hast not forgiven them for the blood they spilled in their mistaken belief thou wert from us descended.”

“What do you _want_?” Arslan becomes aware that his hands have begun to tremble, and he clenches them into fists to conceal it. For so many years he struggled to keep the memories Hraesvelgr refers to buried, and now the dragon would unearth them. And for what? 

The wyrm does not immediately reply. Instead he considers Arslan, watching him in silence as Arslan fights to contain, and then to suppress, the turmoil rising within him; at length, Hraesvelgr closes his eyes and pulls back.

“Poor Ysayle did give her life because she believed thy purpose pure and good—that thou wouldst carry her wish to end this conflict between wyrm and man. Yet all I behold before me now is a cipher. Hast thou no will of thine own beyond the selfish desire to protect thee and thine? Art thou content to be merely a weapon for the rest of thy days, to be used at the pleasure of others?”

At last, Arslan is beginning to understand. To Hraesvelgr, he is a _disappointment_.

Well, what of it? So what if his “selfish desire” to protect those he loves and himself is all that matters to him? Is that not ultimately what lies at the heart of Alphinaud and Aymeric’s determination to save Ishgard?

Or...or has it always been more than that?

“I will still stand at the side of thy companions as an ally, of course. But I look upon thee, child, and I mourn piteous Ysayle. Because all I see is that her faith in thee hath been grievously misplaced.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One particular definition of 'sway' is "to cause (the mind, emotions, etc., or a person) to incline or turn in a specified way; influence." 
> 
> Hraesvelgr mentions that Ysayle reminds him of Shiva, and so it seemed to me that he would not take kindly to the discovery that she sacrificed herself for someone nowhere near as good or selfless as she was.
> 
> The title of the chapter is, of course, dragonspeak (and is incredibly pretentious, don't translate it).


	3. jannequinard? i hardly know 'er

The evening has reached Jannequinard’s favourite part: the moment when food and drink have well and truly settled in one’s stomach, bringing with them a contented drowsiness that he can feel down to his bones. While usually such a warm, languid time was spent reclining on a sofa or divan with one (or more, should the stars smile upon him) lovely maidens, exchanging sweet nothings and even sweeter caresses, now instead he is ensconced in an impressively uncomfortable wooden chair at the Forgotten Knight, at a table laden with dishes scraped clean and many, many empty glasses.

Still, the companionship of one “Lord Rufin” and one famed Warrior of Light is, he finds, very nearly preferable to all that, as not only is it the very first time Arslan agreed to one of his (many) invitations to dine, it is also the first time for the Lady Leveva, who regrettably always seemed to have prior commitments whensoever he asked her to accompany him to this or that soirée or salon. But how his back will ache on the morrow from sitting overlong in this chair.

He’s not entirely sure, admittedly, if Arslan is enjoying himself or is merely tolerating their company for a few bells—he hasn’t touched a single drink that has been served him, and has eaten only sparingly, despite being the one to have put forward the Forgotten Knight as the locale for their meeting. The former Jannequinard would prefer to believe; but at the very least he is glad to see that there is no sign in Arslan of the empty-eyed au ra boy Jannequinard knew nearly an epoch ago.

As though Lady Leveva has read his thoughts with the same fluency she read the star charts (and she may well have, if she performed a reading before the dinner), she asks: “I understand that you and Janne were previously acquainted, Arslan?”

Arslan, seated by his side, nods, then glances at Jannequinard, prompting him with raised eyebrows to provide the fuller explanation. It’s not something he would have done all those years ago, when getting even a simple _yes_ or _no_ out of him often proved to be a challenge that had nearly defeated Jannequinard on multiple occasions. Ah, but how he had grown since then! It could fair bring a tear to the eye—or is that his eyes watering from the pipesmoke thickening the tavern air.

“I was indeed fortunate enough to meet our dear friend before—what feels now like a lifetime, but is merely a few years shy of an epoch ago. In fact,” Jannequinard adds, “you may thank me for teaching the Warrior of Light his letters and enabling him to take that first step onto the stairway to the heavens.”

Rather than being suitably impressed by that revelation (as she should be, in Jannequinard's opinion), Leveva looks to be the opposite. “You _did_?”

Jannequinard intends to protest—he may be prone to, ah, embellishment, but not in this case—but a tap on the table from Arslan gets both of their attention. The Warrior catches Leveva’s gaze and nods, more emphatically than before.

“Hmm.” Leveva sits back, and for once she seems at a loss for words. “You’ll excuse my doubting you, Janne. It’s only that you have demonstrated yourself to be about as useless a teacher as you are an astrologian.”

Oh, no, not at a loss for words. Merely considering how best to gut him. Though Jannequinard doesn’t really mind it so much anymore; he hadn’t been lying when he told Leveva her fire reminded him of his dearest friend Rufin.

“It _is_ hard to believe, is it not?”

“Yes,” Leveva says flatly. “What brought you two together in the first place? I find it doubtful that you would roam the city searching for unlettered children to enlighten.”

Jannequinard makes what he hopes is a grand, sweeping gesture. “The stars, of course. It was they who brought us together as teacher and as protégé, that we might one day meet again and he be in a position to inherit your grandfather’s soul crystal.” He pauses delicately, ignoring Leveva rolling her eyes. “Though what form that fated first meeting actually took on this earth I unfortunately cannot quite recall...Arslan?”

Arslan obligingly gestures as though he is hefting something heavy with both hands, and that is all it takes for things to click in Jannequinard’s mind.

“Of course!” Jannequinard claps Arslan’s back without really thinking about it, but instead of shying away or freezing up like he would nearly an epoch ago, Arslan instead just skews his gaze away from the table and the two of them—almost as though embarrassed.

To Leveva, he continues: “You see, it is common for the noble novitiates who are, ah, unaccustomed to taking care of their own things to employ a youth looking to make a few coins to handle their books and other astrological tools. Arslan was one of those enterprising youths.”

“ _Enterprising_ ,” Leveva repeats darkly. “And you just...offered to instruct him out of the blue one day?”

Feeling like he’s missing something, but not quite able to tell what it is, Jannequinard ignores this. “Well, to make a long story short, one day I caught him at one of our telescopes when he believed the Athenaeum empty after the astrologians had departed for a symposium at the Observatorium.” He pats Arslan’s back. “And how could I ignore such an obvious interest in the heavens?

“But to think that the boy who could barely muster the courage to attend our little lessons would become the person who would put an end to the Dragonsong War! The stars truly take the long view.”

The long view indeed, and now that he thinks about it, the fate they ordain seems to operate on a distressing amount of coincidences and chance. Had he been invited to that selfsame symposium, he would have never been there to see the boy with jet-black horns peering through the eyepiece of a telescope, with the purest expression of awe on his young face… It stirred something within him then, and his memory of it does the same now. How lucky he has been.

Unexpectedly, Leveva smiles—a soft, fond expression. She almost sounds tender as she says: “You are ever full of surprises, Janne.”

“Why, milady, was that a compliment?”

“I suppose if you would like to take it as one…”

And as he and Leveva settle back into the usual course of their conversation, the trading of barbs, Jannequinard decides that mayhap the fact his back will ache something fierce in the morning isn’t so bad at all. Especially considering that out of the corner of his eye, he sees, for the briefest moment, the ghost of a smile touch Arslan’s lips.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thinly-veiled excuse for backstory? thinly-veiled excuse for backstory.


	4. scapegrace

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> some references to sex work. not sure if actually necessary to warn about, but...just in case?

Amha’li stumbles into the Roost at the edge of dawn, his body aching and his back still stinging from the scratches his well-to-do patron had left him as a parting gift during their hurried dalliance earlier that evening—or rather, yesterday. Seemed thrilling at the time, secreting themselves away in some nook in their manor to drunkenly paw at each other, flirting with the Eighth Umbral Calamity that would be getting caught by the other partygoers, but now that pleasant tipsiness has had the chance to sour into vague nausea and a pulsing headache, Amha’li feels that it was merely stupid.

It was not upon them both that the blame would fall, after all. Just him. Money is tight enough already; he can’t lose his patron’s favour now, as he surely would have were they found, easy as it would have been to make him the scapegoat. Especially since Amha’li had just cajoled the wealthy Elezen to secure his room at the Roost for three more moons, and he would very much like to keep a place to live for the foreseeable future.

Returning to the tribe living in the Shroud is, of course, not an option. He refuses to trudge back, tail between his legs, into that painfully solitary life that stultifying tradition would have him lead. 

The Carline Canopy’s tables are empty, as they should be at this hour; even Mother Miounne has left her vigil in favour of a soft feather bed. Only unlucky Antoinaut remains awake, and as Amha’li approaches the reception desk, he picks up on the twitch of distaste at the corner of the man’s lips.

He’d forgotten to do up his collar on the walk back from the Gentry’s Ward, hadn’t he? Ah, well. Let him look. 

Amha’li puts on the brightest grin he can muster, and props himself on the reception desk on his elbows. Just a little too close. “And a very good morrow to you, Antoinaut. I trust you are well?”

“Quite,” Antoinaut replies, not quite able to conceal the ice in his tone.

“Full glad am I to hear it.”

These prissy Elezen and their hang-ups...work is work, and that his work involves a different set of skills than say hunting, or chopping wood, or harvesting crops ought to be irrelevant. Besides, it’s hardly Amha’li’s fault that the other places he looked for work in the city wouldn’t have him, their owner’s mouths declaring slow business or glut of workers while their eyes gave away the game: _a Keeper? Nothing but a poacher. Bandit. Thief._ Should he be blamed for pursuing other avenues of employment when most others stand closed to him?

And, well. He would be lying if he said he didn’t like the attention.

“On another subject,” Antoinaut says, “while you are here, master Maimhov, a message arrived for you last evening, from one Madam Parnell.”

“Oh, indeed? Well, let’s have it, then.” Whoever this Parnell is, Amha’li can’t remember; she’s not a client, that’s for sure. He’ll sort it out in the morning. Or late afternoon, whenever he wakes.

Antoinaut turns to rummage through one of the many drawers behind him; Amha’li watches him absently, trying to remember if he has any of that expensive Ishgardian brandy—a gift from one of his former clients—left in his room. A warm bath and another drink to stave off the encroaching hangover sounds very close to heaven right about now.

“Here you are.”

Antoinaut faces him once more, and holds out a small envelope sealed with wax. Amha’li accepts it with another winning smile, then straightens up to leave.

“Thank you kindly, dear Antoinaut. Good day.”

Once back in his room, Amha’li puts the letter on the little desk in the corner of his room, and then shrugs off his jacket and tosses it carelessly onto his bed. For the moment, he forgets about the letter—his thoughts turn more towards just where he might have left that bottle of brandy, and he sets about rummaging through his things in search of it. Armoire, dresser, the stack of clothes abandoned at the foot of his bed…

Aha! There it is, balanced precariously on top of the orchestrion each room inexplicably has. And fortune doth truly smile upon him, for yet half its contents remain.

Amha’li uncorks it, takes a swig; while his tongue tingles and throat burns, he flops into the chair at his desk and puts up his feet. It’s then he remembers the letter, and seeing as the drink has begun to blunt his hangover, he decides he might as well read it now rather than put it off ‘til the morrow.

_Amha’li Maimhov,_ the letter begins,

_We are pleased to inform you that, after reviewing…_

Amha’li forgoes reading the rest of that line, as well as the next. All this stuffy formality could well put him to sleep before he finishes reading the letter—is it so difficult for Gridanians to get to the _point_? Or do they fear rousing the ire of a spirit or elemental or whatever they call them if they do not use a score of words where one would do?

At last, he reaches the point of the letter. The Adventurer’s Guild had processed his petition to sell himself as a retainer through Gridania’s resident retainer vocate, and in fact, had found him a position already, should he be willing to take it. Arslan Qestir, the adventurer is called, a name Amha’li can’t really place. It is decidedly not an Elezen name, nor is it one belonging to a Roegdayn or Keeper or Seeker.

Nevertheless, for some reason or another the name does sound...familiar. Hadn’t he heard it on the lips of some Gridanian nobles at a party recently? An up-and-coming adventurer, they said, who has done much for Gridania and the Shroud. Something about having horns? Amha’li would guess he were a Padjali, were it not, again, for the name, and were it not for the fact Padjali were to the last all holier-than-thou traditionalists that would never in a thousand years condescend to _adventure_.

That he petitioned the Guild to be a retainer completely slipped his mind in the weeks since he had done it (some fool idea he’d had while drunk, he presumes). But now that he thinks back to the places he heard the adventurer’s name, the more glad he becomes that he thought to do so. Retainer work would undoubtedly be far steadier than the work he does now, and to associate with an adventurer that had captured the attention of so many nobles would be quite the boon… 

It’s settled, then. Amha’li would have to balance his commitment to the Elezen noble whose bed he had been warming for the past moon or so, but he had quite a lot of practise in charming them to get his way. They wouldn’t mind; like as not, being connected through the adventurer through Amha’li would wipe any thought of protest from their precious little mind.

Now to go bother poor Antoinaut for a clean sheet of paper and a pen to write a reply.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Amha'li "clinch"ing his position as Arslan's retainer was the original idea behind this, but a slang meaning of clinch is apparently "to embrace passionately," which is an even better fit, if entirely unintentionally.


	5. stonewall

It has been two weeks since Amha’li has been assigned to Gridania’s most famous adventurer as retainer, and still, despite his best efforts, he knows nearly nothing about him. Not where he comes from, or where he’s been; not the things he likes or the things he doesn’t; not even what motivates him to work so diligently and so tirelessly for Gridania—to the extent he agreed to journey to Limsa Lominsa and Ul’dah as the Elder Seedseer’s envoy! There must be a reason for it, but there have been no signs at all indicating what it might be.

Granted, some of Arslan’s reticence might be due to the fact he cannot speak (the reason for which, like everything else about him, Amha’li also doesn’t know). But still, Arslan seems to understand spoken common and can write well enough in it if the short notes with his requests he often leaves Amha’li are any indication, so there must be another explanation. Another mystery, rather.

The extent of their relationship so far: he calls Amha’li to his room at the Roost to convey items to the market or hold gil or, rarely, to go into the Shroud in search of particular resources. Otherwise he receives Amha’li’s overtures towards friendship or at least acquaintanceship the same as he does, say, news from the Twin Adders of an impending catastrophe in the Shroud he must needs resolve—which is to say, with little to no reaction at all save a brusque nod or shake of his head or a blunt few words jotted down onto a scrap of paper. Amha’li doesn’t think he’s ever seen Arslan smile, or frown, or...anything, really, his affect so flat and unchanging it seems almost inhuman. 

Arslan entirely disarms him. Amha’li’s previous line of work involved constantly having to mould himself and his behaviour according to his clients’ moods; conversations, no matter how trivial, always had been careful give-and-takes, pulls-and-pushes, choreographed waltzes where one misstep would lead to ruin. Not so with Arslan, however. It would be easier charming a mountain into giving up its mantle of snow in winter than it would be to prise any sort of reaction out of Arslan at all.

Not that Amha’li is complaining, exactly, about their arrangement. His duties as Arslan’s retainer are less than demanding, and working for someone so easy on the eyes is a privilege. Quite literally, Amha’li has never seen anyone like him before.

His build resembles the slender, long-limbed form of an Elezen, but rather than pointed ears he has horns, ones far more impressive, in Amha’li’s humble opinion, than those of a Padjali, that jut from his head where the ears would have been, then swoop down towards his shoulders in elegant curves (and Amha’li has been tempted far too many times to run his fingers down their intricately textured surface). Like his slim tail and the scales pebbling the bridge of his nose and lining his jaw, the horns are a deep, crow’s-feather black, though at their tips they fade into a dark red that Amha’li also almost always sees shadowing the sharp corners of Arslan’s eyes—one of the very few expressions of personal preference in dress and appearance Amha’li has ever seen him display beyond ensuring he is sensibly clothed.

(It’s a little endearing, actually: the fact that someone whose sense of style is defined solely by grim, impersonal functionality would take the time in the mornings to paint their face.)

Arslan’s skin colour, too, is decidedly foreign to Gridania’s sun-dappled demesnes, a dusky hue that reminds Amha’li of the sky after twilight. He seems more a creature of the night than Amha’li himself is, all dark colours that would blend in easily to the darkness of the forest, in comparison to Amha’li’s unusually pale blond hair and tanned skin that would better befit a Seeker than a Keeper. Funny, that.

But whatever he is is another mystery Arslan chooses not to elucidate. The man is mysteries upon mysteries, unknowns upon unknowns; all Amha’li really knows for sure is that Arslan hails not from Gridania, and that he is an unusually strong and resilient adventurer accomplished in the field of conjury.

All Arslan’s unshakable reserve accomplishes, however, is to rouse Amha’li’s interest in him all the more (not that Amha’li can be certain such reserve is meant to dissuade or even intentional). And Amha’li likes the idea of having a mystery, or several, to unravel.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> matter-of-fact: lacking emotion, straightforward.


	6. acedia

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cw: blood, gore, child abuse, suicidal ideation

i.

Every day, the child dreams of taking to the plains with the other warriors of his tribe; every day, he dreams of having a body hale and hearty, powerful and strong, not one left weak and frail after an illness tore through him like a brushfire on the steppe.

Every night, a city in flames is scorched onto the backs of his eyelids; every night, visions come of a land across the sea. The sheer impossibility of conveying what he sees to others in his tribe suffocates him, isolates him—no matter how much he wants to turn to another for support, he cannot, for he has no way to make them understand.

_Hear. Feel. Think._

The voice—if he can call it that, for it does not reach him as do the lies of the other tribes, but as pure, icy meaning insinuated into the deepest, most essential part of his mind—came to him one night, and now does not stop. The words echo in his skull ceaselessly, quiet often, but so loud sometimes he can barely think. During those times, there is no peace to be found in sleep, so he slips from the yurt to lie in the grass outside of the settlement and take refuge in the stars. Under the moon’s gentle gaze, he allows himself to imagine drifting in the dark sea above, shining bright, a beacon for his people.

_Hear. Feel. Think._

Deep down, he knows that it is a call. A summons. A plea. But he ignores it all the same.

ii.

The boy is older now, but no stronger. Fatigue is an all-too-constant companion, draped over him like a blanket, weighing heavy on his limbs. Too often, he struggles to breathe, chest aching with the effort to bring air to his lungs.

Ever more does he feel like he stands apart from his tribe, and that he does not belong is made apparent every time a group of young warriors returns from the hunt or from a skirmish with another tribe overeager to test their boundaries, while he remains with the elderly and infirm, mixing medicines and tending to the livestock. Bloodied and beaten but grinning, the warriors sling their arms around one another’s shoulders, they join their voices in a chorus of wordless victory; their bond runs deeper than most, forged in steel by the purity of their deeds.

_Hear. Feel. Think._

Still the voice calls to him, but now he is beginning to wonder if he is meant to heed it. Mayhap his destiny lies not with his tribe as he so fervently believed and yearned to be true, but elsewhere—this land across the sea. Mayhap in crossing the sea, as impossible as that is for him to imagine, he will find the strength he craves. As the moon waxes and wanes and waxes once again, his uncertainty solidifies into conviction.

So when a group of other au ra passes through the settlement, bound for a land across the sea, fleeing the armies of a nation from the west, the boy sees only confirmation that he is right, that the land across the sea is his destiny, a path laid out for him by divinity. That he had not been able to see it until now is a failing of his own.

He leaves quietly, without farewells. No one would notice.

iii.

All has become mercifully silent.

The boy lies beneath the weight of a cooling corpse, pressed down into the mud. He hadn’t even known the man’s name, and yet without hesitation the man had thrown himself across him, a desperate attempt to hide him from the eyes of the knights of the frozen city. The boy remembers with perfect clarity the way the man seized when the sword pierced his throat; he remembers the blood, sickeningly warm, streaking his cheeks in red, salting his lips.

At length, thirst gets the better of him, so he extricates himself to swallow a few mouthfuls of snow. The motions come strangely to him, as though his body is no longer his own. To whom belong those trembling hands? From whom come those pathetic little sobs? Who is that child kneeling in the snow?

He stays by the body, unmoving, until workers from the Brume sent to clear away the refuse before the Gates of Judgment find him.

iv.

“Can’t use your tongue, eh, boy?”

The metal gauntlet squeezes tight, forcing his teeth apart. Torchlight glints off the silvered blade of a knife. He pulls uselessly at the Temple Knight’s hand.

He had done nothing but be in the wrong place at the wrong time. And for that, he had achieved in doing what he had been taught by Brume children, savvier and more capable than he, not to do: remind the Temple Knights that he exists. A crucial lesson for his fellows, but what could be a matter of life and death for him given the belief amongst their more conservative elements he is some manner of Dravanian abomination.

“The See has changed its opinion on your kind, but nevertheless one cannot be too cautious of the harm your poisonous tongue could one day inflict. Hold him steady.”

The blade slides between his teeth. Bites deep into the root of his tongue. His eyes go wide.

“Halone,” the knight says, as though at prayer, heedless of the noises, jagged and raw, the boy is making, “receive of me this offering in Your name. For You do I silence this boy, that he might better listen to Your words, and sow not doubt in the hearts of Your people...”

v.

On clear nights, the youth finds his way to a particular part of the Brume, where a narrow tongue of stone juts out over the Sea of Clouds. He stands at its very edge and turns his gaze to the foreign sky and its foreign stars, and allows himself to imagine rising up, up past the elegant manors of the Pillars and the nobles that turned a blind eye to the Brume, up past the spires of the Vault and the breathtaking cruelty practised within its walls, until Nhaama can reach down and gather him up to her bosom in the heavens.

(One single step. That’s all it would take.)

_Hear. Feel. Think._

How he wishes he had never listened to that voice. If only he had learned to accept and be satisfied with his place in the world, then he would not be trapped here, so far from home, spending nights sleeping on cold stone or—if lucky—in the alcove of an abandoned doorstep. Living on scraps of bread and food more often spoilt than not.

This world has nothing for him, and so he gives it nothing back, doing day to day only what is necessary to survive, barely. He already belongs to Nhaama and the stars; it is only a question now of when he will join them.


	7. the voice of the forest

It is difficult for him sometimes to remember that the lives of Gridania’s people are, to the last, uniquely meaningful, deserving of protection and preservation from the creeping dark. In the vast expanse of his years, the deaths of Gridania’s people—to old age, to illness, to mishap or misfortune—flatten into a ceaseless stream of inevitable ends. To be born is to die; but too often he forgets that to have died means to once have lived.

From a young age, E-Sumi has been immersed in the voices of the elementals. They whisper to him in the sighing of the breeze on a warm spring day, in the sonorous rumbling of peaceable earth, and in the gentle chatter of a brook. They howl their discontent in the cutting gales of a summer storm, in the still, steady earth beneath his feet suddenly quaking to life, in the destruction wrought by a river that overflowed its banks. Their satisfaction is sweeter than honey and gentler than sunlight, and their anger more terrible than the worst tempest, drowning him in fury.

Yet even now he cannot say he understands the elementals in the most essential sense of the word. To be sure, over the winding course of his life he has learned to recognise that which might bring down their wrath and that which might cajole them into granting much-needed succour, but that is a shallow thing. Their motivations, the true shape of their thoughts (if they can even be said to have thoughts as the spoken races understand the term), what informs their wishes or their decrees—all of it remains opaque to him to this day.

E-Sumi has spent the vast majority of his time on Hydaelyn heeding the elementals, drinking deep of their particular view of the Twelveswood. The forest, its rivers, its stones, the earth in which it plants its feet, all have been here for a thousand thousand years and would be for a thousand thousand more; while life, animal and human alike, makes their home under shrouding canopies, that life is ultimately temporary, while the forest would remain.

Animals exist to be mere pieces in the cycle of life and death that sustains the forest, hunting, mating, and living by instinct alone, no different indeed from the delicate internal systems that regulate the bodies of one of Eorzea’s spoken races. Humans, on the other hand, would never be anything other than interlopers, indulged for a time, but not forever. Ephemeral. Temporary. Destined to one day pass on, leaving the place they had once called home to be reclaimed by the forest and the elementals.

In the face of such ageless beings, suns, moons, years, epochs, and millennia lose their meaning, and indeed time’s discoherence made all the easier by the fact their touch has made him as changeless as they. He has seen so many conflicts, so much brutality, and he has abided by the side of so many of the wounded and the ill, watching them die because the elementals refused him the permission to save their lives.

After so long with only the elementals and the forest as the constant in his life, it has become all too easy for him to let all that recede into insignificance.

Movement, and the momentary intrusion of sound into the reverent silence of the Stillglade Fane has E-Sumi draw himself out of the depths of his thoughts, and raise his head. There is, of course, only one person to whom such a bright voice could belong, and his own eyes confirm his suspicion: it is Sylphie, returned here by the side of their newest conjurer, an adventurer recently come to Gridania from parts unknown.

In the end, he would never let go of that mercurial, human part of him that yet believes in the fundamental importance of each and every Gridanian life under his care. Because there would always be people like Sylphie, or her mother, or Arslan, to anchor him here amongst the quick. To remind him that temporary though human life may be, yet worthy is it of his protection.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> E-Sumi-Yan is equivalent to two nonagenarians and change, technically.
> 
> Wanted to play up the "alien" quality of the elementals, and dig a little into how a Padjali (who are originally Hyur) might be affected by having to deal with them for literal centuries and by their own agelessness.


	8. overload

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cw: depiction of panic attack

The crowds press in around him: Elezen, Hyur, and the rare Roegadyn or Miqo’te alike, all come to the Stalls and the Shaded Bower for their own reasons. Never does the movement of the great mass of people cease, its component parts carried on invisible currents, brought together and drawn apart and moved past one another, to the sound of scores of conversations held simultaneously and of shouted greetings and hasty farewells and intense haggling and laughter and of the rough scrape of a goldsmith at their grinding wheel and of the wooden clunk of a weaver at their spinning wheel and of the clanging of a mender hard at work hammering out the dents in a piece of armour—and of the ringing of the summoning bell as Arslan, balancing his packages precariously in one arm, reaches out to touch it.

Arslan is reminded of why he has always made a point to summon Amha’li at his room at the Roost rather than at the Bower. He prefers silence over noise, solitude over company; prefers still more not to feel prickling at the back of his neck the gazes of Gridanians who recognise him as the Elder Seedseer’s favoured adventurer and gawp in shameless curiosity. As though he is some sort of exoticism conveyed here for their entertainment: behold this strange creature from parts unknown! Scaled like a dragon yet hornèd like a Padjal, what caprice of nature could have produced such an outlandish form?

And it is only a few steps from outlandish to freakish, from strange to aberrant. While Gridanians wear the better masks than Ishgardians, underneath undoubtedly lies the same sentiment. It is only a matter of time until they remove those masks.

Abruptly, the absurd impression that the world has shifted, has been nudged out of joint, strikes him full in the face: he feels like he is looking through a kaleidoscope turned so that the light falls differently, less forgivingly, on the coloured glass within. The noise within the Bower and the Stalls has acquired a harsh edge, like the rough screech of a blade against stone—the sounds of conversation and happy laughter feel like an assault, a wave of noise large enough to drown.

He tries to breathe, to calm himself and banish the sensation that in the crowd around him lurks some looming threat; but there is a familiar feeling rising unstoppably within him, like dark water, filling his chest and pushing the air from his lungs. Arslan has not moved and yet his stomach turns over, as though in descending a flight of stairs he has misplaced his feet and found only empty air.

Each face his eyes find in the crowd seems suddenly wholly alien, formless agglomerations of eyes, lips, teeth, modelling clay shaped by some great hand into the shoddy semblance of people. Their gazes probing him like overcurious fingers, crawling along the back of his neck and creeping over his horns.

His chest aches, as though he’s been shoved underwater and can’t get any air. Arslan _knows_ he needs to leave, to orient his body towards the surface and swim up, but no matter how much he wills it his limbs refuse to move.

Suddenly, there is a hand at the small of his back, and Arslan goes utterly rigid, so tense his limbs ache from it.

=

“Just the handsome fellow I was searching for!” Amha’li says. He edges around Arslan’s side to get to his front—maybe he’d let his hand linger a little too long at Arslan’s back, but, well. Calling him handsome isn’t _just_ a bit of sycophancy meant to ensure he remains in his adventurer’s good graces.

“How fare you today, Master Qestir?” he asks. At least, he means to ask that. But he doesn’t quite get that far, because the look in Arslan’s eyes, the taut way he holds himself, the harsh rasp of his quickened breathing—

Forgetting himself, Amha’li reaches out to touch Arslan’s arm. “...Are you all right?”

Arslan’s eyes focus on him, as though he’s only just realised Amha’li’s there. He relaxes, minutely, and gives Amha’li, against all odds, the smallest nod. Amha’li nearly laughs at the absurdity of it—as though it would be reasonable to believe all is well! Surely Arslan does not really expect him to be convinced by that?

Quickly, Amha’li takes from Arslan what he can carry with one arm, and puts himself by Arslan’s side. His other hand once again finds Arslan’s back, but this time to get him to move. “Come on. Seems to me some fresh air would do you good.”

Thankfully, Arslan’s resistance to being moved lasts only a few seconds, and Amha’li is able to usher him out of the Shaded Bower to one of the benches by the steps, nestled in the shade of one of Gridania’s many trees. Once he ensures Arslan is settled there, his packages by his side, Amha’li dives back into the crowds, seeking out the little stall in the Ebony Stalls he knows sells food and drink—in particular, a lovely chamomile tea he thinks (hopes) will help.

Amha’li still knows very, very little about his adventurer, but what he _does_ know is that he couldn’t well leave him to deal with whatever this is on his own. Certainly, it wouldn’t reflect well on him as a retainer, but to leave someone in clear distress is something he himself would not be able to stomach. That he’s not entirely sure what the _best_ way to help is, is...well. He must try something.

Thankfully, no one complains when he insinuates himself into the queue near its head, just aims their sulphurous glares at the back of his head. Amha’li ignores them, pays for the tea with a handful of coins scooped haphazardly from his pouch, and departs without his change, despite the best efforts of the person manning the stall to summon him back for it.

Arslan hasn’t moved when Amha’li gets back outside; he sits on the bench, utterly still, staring at nothing. Now that his breathing has steadied somewhat, and that panicked, hunted look has vanished from his eyes, only his hands betray the turmoil within him: his right hand, clamped tight around his left wrist, and his left, clenched tightly into a trembling fist. For the first time, it occurs to Amha'li that Arslan is very, very young, younger perhaps even than Amha'li. His height and cool composure are deceptive; Amha'li doubts that he's seen much more than two score years.

Amha’li doesn’t bother asking him if he’s feeling better—obviously not quite yet. Instead, he just offers Arslan the drink.

“Here. If you want it.” He pauses, and when Arslan does not immediately move to take the tea from him, he continues: “It’s an infusion of chamomile. They say it’s meant to calm. You don’t have to drink it if you don’t want to, of course, I only thought...”

Ah, he’s babbling.

Arslan raises his gaze to meet Amha’li’s own: the cautious look of someone who is far too accustomed to having such offerings snatched away at the last second. But eventually, slowly, by degrees, his hands unclench, while all the while he watches Amha’li intently. Amha’li does his best not to look threatening.

Then Arslan lifts his left hand, its palm marked deeply by his nails, and accepts the tea. He takes a tiny sip, and tilts his head back slightly to swallow—with some difficulty, Amha’li can’t help noting. 

There is a moment of quiet. Arslan lowers the tea to his lap, cradling the cup in both of his hands, and closes his eyes. His breathing eases further, settling into slow, deep breaths, in through the nose and out through the mouth.

“...Shall I go?” Amha’li asks softly. “I can return later if you like.”

Arslan’s eyes flick up to Amha’li’s face, then they skew away, towards the grass beneath their feet. He responds with a slight shake of his head.

“Right, then.” Amha’li perches on one of the bench’s arms. He is...glad, perhaps, that Arslan seems to be taking comfort from his presence.

“Then I’ll be here—take as long as you need.”


	9. arrival

This time, he does not dream of the burning city or of Eorzea, but of the limitless void, illuminated only by a pale mote of orange light. Of a figure robed in black, his face obscured by a crimson mask. Of the darkness, deeper even than the blackest night, rising at the figure’s command.

The mote of orange light finds him, and those damned words, his constant companion for years now, come to him again: _Hear. Feel. Think._

The light swells, and swells further, scorchingly bright, rendering him momentarily blind. Every part of him burns in the oppressive light: it surrounds him, burrows inside of him, coalescing into a single, fiery point within his chest. The voice rises to a crescendo, so loud that for an agonising handful of seconds, for him there is nothing but the voice, calling to him, pleading with him, _begging_ him to heed its words and succumb to its will.

A sigil of unfamiliar-familiar form flickers into existence over the figure’s face, and with it comes a flood of shadow, roiling and churning across the void to crash against the light. He raises his hands to defend himself and—

—another voice, one far more grounded in the physical, banishes the dream in an instant. Arslan jumps awake, his breath scraping through his teeth, heart threatening to batter through his ribs. His whole body hums with the urge to flee.

The person who woke him is speaking to him still, but Arslan can barely focus on his voice while the skeins of the nightmare cling to him, not yet brushed away. He curls his fingers around the edge of the bench on which he sits, presses himself back against its firm wooden back, and breathes deep of the sweet air of the Shroud, imbued with the perfume of flowering life where Coerthan air is dead and cold, like a knife’s edge. He forces himself to be aware of every movement of the carriage, grounding himself in the slow, languid swaying that had nearly made him sick during the first hours of the journey.

The nightmare was just a nightmare. He has nothing to fear—now more than ever. Fortunate indeed that that strange Ishgardian noble had been so willing to fund his passage across the snows of the Central Highlands to Gridania. Even that noble, despite existing with a bubble of wealth and influence that shielded his precious eyes from the truth of his city, had been able to recognise the new heights the Isghardians' fanatical fervour had reached in the years since the Calamity, and what Arslan, given his appearance, risked by remaining.

Arslan is...grateful, maybe, for that noble’s (what was his name again? Jacquelin?) largesse. He’s grateful too for the fact that even though he had seemed entirely aware Arslan was using him these past few years for food and money more than for his knowledge of astromancy (as...incomplete as that was) he hadn’t minded.

At the same time, for all Arslan’s difficulties, there were people in the Brume still worse off than he, and it had not even occurred to Josquin to extend them his aid. Arslan’s own situation had only come about because he had been lucky enough that it was that particular noble that caught him at the Athenaeum’s telescopes, rather than any of the others—he’d rather not think about what might have happened otherwise.

So, grateful—not really, not for doing the absolute least he possibly could. But he _acknowledges_ that without Jannequinaux he would not have been able to finally escape Ishgard.

“I was goin’ to ask you to keep me company until we reached Gridania, but you care even less for conversation than them young’uns, seems like.”

Ah, yes, the other traveller, a grizzled man with a penchant for drinking. Arslan lifts his head a little to meet his gaze, and shakes his head slightly before motioning to his throat. It usually gets the point across.

The older man raises his eyebrows. “Can’t talk, eh? Beggin’ your pardon for that comment at your expense, then. Rare to run into someone like you, you know. The voice, and”—he makes a vague circular motion with his hand, encompassing Arslan—“gen’rally.”

That puts Arslan immediately on edge. What would come next, he wonders. An insult? A look of disgust? Perhaps a question about whether or not his mother lay with a dragon? 

And that young Elezen in blue—is he watching him out of the corner of his eye? 

But none of that comes. Instead, the man just sighs and settles back against the back of his own seat. “Now, I love the sound of my own voice as much as any man... I’m Bremondt, if you were wonderin’. This your first time to Gridania?

After a moment, Arslan cautiously nods, and his nerves’ tight grip on him eases, a little. This isn’t Ishgard any longer, he reminds himself; he’s finally, _finally_ free.

Besides, the conversation, as one-sided as it would be, could serve as a useful distraction from the lingering scraps of the nightmare he just had—and as a distraction from those bizarre white-furred creatures he sometimes sees fluttering around the outside of the carriage. He, of course, pretends not to see them, just like Bremondt seems to be doing. (Or perhaps Bremondt simply cannot see them, which raises more questions Arslan has no interest in confronting. Getting to Gridania is all he wants at this point.)

“Thought so,” Bremondt is saying. “Seemed like you were sufferin’ a bout of the aether sickness there—always gets the new ones. But you’ll soon get used to it.”

Arslan listens to him ramble, offering a nod, or shake of the head, or even a shrug to keep the conversation moving, and hopes they’ll reach Gridania soon.


	10. unfettered

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cw: blood, gore

The first former Crystal Brave to step forward and attempt to bar their passage down Halatali’s winding halls dies quickly: with a gesture from Arslan, the earth softens into quicksand beneath their feet, and as they, unbalanced, fall forward, another gesture brings up a spike of stone to meet their eye, punching through flesh, brain, and bone. Their body twitches uselessly, flopping bonelessly like a fish on a hook, then stills. Arslan does not even spare them a second glance as he moves silently on down the hall, intent on reaching General Raubahn without delay.

Alphinaud goes after him, but glances back at the body, once, then twice. So still.

The Warrior of Light approaches every battle as though it were his last, fighting with the viciousness of a cornered animal with nothing to lose—despite being, arguably, the one doing the cornering. He brings the wind to bear to suck eyes from their sockets and scour skin from bone; he turns the very earth against his foes, crushing one of the traitors between a pillar of stone and one of Halatali’s earthen walls, forcing open the earth beneath another’s feet before causing it to snap shut with brutal force to grind them into an unrecognisable mess of blood and bone.

As the scent of blood rises around them, Alphinaud tastes rust and salt at the back of his tongue. His gorge rises in response, and he comes very close to vomiting. Alphinaud has never really had the chance to see how, exactly, his Warrior of Light—Arslan—fights, shamefully far as he has always been from combat, and what a discomfiting feeling it fills him with: an tense knot in his gut, and undefinable sense of foreboding, of knowing not what, exactly, he should expect.

Of course, Alphinaud _understands_ that killing those he once believed comrades is the order of the day in an operation like this; yet still he retained a small spark of hope that unnecessary violence might be avoided this day, especially violence like this. Then again, he supposes that is one more sign of his idealism, his sheltered upbringing—war is not honourable, and never was, and he had been a fool to think so.

Arslan’s expression changes not at all as Ilberd, Yuyuhase, and Laurentius reveal themselves, just as it had not changed as he sowed death in the arena’s halls. It’s blank, utterly blank, and his eyes—oh, his eyes are the worst part, empty of anything and everything, as though Arslan has withdrawn into the depths of his mind and surrendered his body to instinct alone.

Such apparent apathy towards his foes—they are as unimportant to him as paying their Fortemps patrons the appropriate respect is, much to Alphinaud’s chagrin—makes it all too easy to imagine Arslan on the other side. It makes it all too easy for doubt to worm its way into his mind, asking him: does Arslan truly fight for the Scions and what they stand for? Or does he fight merely because that’s what he’s been told to do, and wants it over with as quickly as possible? If the Scions hadn’t gotten to him first...what then?

When the battle (unsurprisingly at this point) concludes in their favour, Arslan makes to pursue the fleeing Ilberd and his compatriots, even after Lady Yugiri forestalled Alphinaud from doing the same. Heedless of the blood slicking the stone under the soles of his boots, Arslan strides for the gate, and is but a few paces from it when Alphinaud collects himself enough to call him back.

“Arslan! The general…”

Arslan pauses for a few seconds, so long, that Alphinaud begins to wonder if he had heard him. Then he turns to look back at Alphinaud, and under that vacant gaze, Alphinaud realises what that discomfiting feeling he felt all this time is.

Fear.

As ridiculous as it sounds, that’s what it is. Killing the score of Crystal Braves in the bowels of Halatali left no more of a stain on Arslan’s affect than defeating primals, going to war with Garlemald, or slaying Gaius van Baelsar had. It’s only natural to find the ease and efficiency with which Arslan takes lives somewhat distressing. To say the least.

It’s a sobering, and somewhat frightening, realisation that he does not _really_ understand Arslan at all. The first glimpse he ever had into Arslan as a _person_ —the first proper glimpse—was when they were forced to come to Ishgard, first for Cid’s airship and then because they were fleeing the Monetarists, because those were perhaps the only times when Arslan’s carefully maintained reserve had ever broken down to reveal what felt like someone else entirely. Someone vulnerable and anxious and on edge, barely able to stand being in an enclosed space with Ishgardian knights, whose eyes would again and again find their way to the egress, as though reassuring himself a way out remained accessible.

In the present, the tenor of Arslan’s gaze changes, and Alphinaud feels as though Arslan sees him for who he is again, rather than just another face. Arslan approaches, and kneels before Alphinaud, and to Alphinaud’s deep shame it is a struggle to stop himself from flinching when Arslan reaches out; too fresh are the memories of their previous skirmishes.

Arslan’s gloved fingers touch Alphinaud’s cheek, and trace a line heat—burning, but nevertheless pleasant—parallel to Alphinaud’s cheekbone. Healing. Alphinaud hadn’t even noticed he was wounded.

Then Arslan straightens up and goes to tend to the general, and Alphinaud is left remembering Lady Yugiri’s quiet words to him about the tribe Arslan hails from: all words are lies, and a man’s actions are the purest form of communication. In that case, that Arslan fought so hard for the Scions, and fought so hard to keep Alphinaud safe, should provide the window into Arslan’s psyche Alphinaud has been searching for.

But still, Alphinaud was raised on words: on ancient texts, on lectures from his uncle and the instructors at the Studium, on speeches and on debates in the Forum, on learning the steps of the political waltzes he so often engaged in. Words are and always have been his primary weapon, his best way to influence the course of events in Eorzea.

He can remind himself all he wants of Lady Yugiri’s description of the Qestir tribe, but there will still be a part of him that is not quite sure of Arslan’s true intentions. Even though Arslan has agreed to study, and has been studying, the Sharlayan language of signs with him in the evenings, Alphinaud cannot quite…

But in the end, that is a personal failure, isn’t it. And after so long taking Arslan for granted, he owes it to him, to one of the few people that stayed by his side after his many mistakes with the Crystal Braves, to conquer it.


	11. homesick

“Arslan, are you listening?”

Arslan looks up from his cup of tea. At the other side of the table, across which are spread out several tomes on the Sharlayan language of signs and the remains of a light meal kindly provided by the Fortemps cook even at this late hour, sits Alphinaud, watching him with his eyebrows expectantly raised. It’s still a little strange to see him during times like this in the Fortemps manor, with his hair down and a fur tucked around his narrow shoulders to ward off the late-night Ishgardian chill, but the prim Alphinaud to which Arslan became so accustomed is still echoed in his straight-backed bearing, and the intensity with which he approaches this instruction.

No matter how many times they sit at this table to study the language—a necessity, Alphinaud insisted, because there will inevitably come a time when you will have no access to ink, quill, and parchment—Arslan cannot banish his discomfort with it. And if he’s not careful, this happens: his mind drifting, receding from the suffocatingly opulent sitting room to avoid thinking about what his body is doing.

Slowly, Arslan raises his left hand to his chest, closed into a fist with the thumb pressed flat against his second finger instead of curved along his knuckles, and describes a few small circles with it.

“I’m sorry.”

Alphinaud blinks; his expression, which betrays his waning patience in the tight corners of his lips and his slightly furrowed brows, softens into something gentler. He pushes the book before him a little away from himself, then settles back into his chair. 

“No need to apologise, my friend. Forgive me if I sounded harsh.” He smiles ruefully. “Mayhap it is past time for us to be abed.”

Arslan does not respond, instead letting his eyes drop to his tea cup once again. The liquid within has long gone cold, and he still yet has to drink more than a few mouthfuls. Eating and drinking are another thing he prefers to do alone, because lodged within him still are the memories of how he was teased by other children in the Brume while relearning how to eat and drink after that Temple Knight sought to silence his possibly heretical words by depriving him of part of his tongue.

And on top of that enduring shame, with each sign he learns here he feels ever more distant from his home. From the Steppe. With each sign he learns here, more of a liar he becomes—someone not worthy of the trust Amha’li, and Alphinaud and the other Scions give him...

Learning to write and read was a necessary evil, and an acceptable one, given that the written word was used to communicate with outsider traders in Reunion and to grant them writ of approval to trade. Besides, the written word endures; its permanence lends it a weight the spoken word, by nature ephemeral and transitory, does not have. And the written word, as Arslan learned on the Steppe and in Eorzea, _binds_ : contracts and agreements, shipping manifests and promissory notes, and all manner of other things.

Compare that to the spoken word, which binds Eorzeans, Garleans, Domans, and other Xaela alike in cobwebs and thread, all too easily broken. To declare that you will act is no guarantee you will; but to act without saying conveys your intentions and your truth in a way pure and unsullied by words that can be twisted and bent and distorted beyond all recognition.

Alphinaud has straightened up again, and the light from the candles clustered close on the table glints off the deep concern in his eyes. “Are you well, Arslan?”

Arslan’s hands move jerkily, completely lacking in the natural fluidity of one fluent in the language. “Thinking..about...home.”

It’s only after he finishes forming the signs with his hands that he realises: he lied. Lied without even really thinking about it—how easily, how unconsciously, that deflection had come from him now that he has the tools for it! Where before he would simply meet questions he did not want to answer with solid silence and that would be that, now that he has learned this form of _speech_ he is expected to speak, and that expectation has already taken root deep within him.

“Ah…” Alphinaud falls quiet for a few seconds. “The Azim Steppe. Still is the fact you hail from such a distant place capable of rousing within me some feelings of surprise. But I understand well that you must miss the place.”

To hear him speak the name of the Azim Steppe triggers a pang of familiar pain through Arslan’s chest. Yearning and longing and regret, all tangled together in a knot that sometimes threatens to choke him—mourning for a home he in truth no longer has, despite what he calls it.

If only he had not heeded the Hydaelyn's words, and had not unwittingly stepped into the role of her coeurl’s-paw. 

“When all this is over,” Alphinaud says, choosing his words carefully, a man hesitantly placing a foot on unstable ground, “when we have proven our innocence and won our freedom...mayhap we could find a way to travel to Othard.”

Arslan gives a fierce shake of his head. No. Never.

“Yes, well, I suppose you’re right.” Alphinaud sighs. “Garlean occupation would present us with a not insignificant amount of difficulty.” He draws the fur close around his slim frame, eyes drifting towards the window, a sheer pane of black now that it is night. His gaze perceives not the night nor the glass but something else entirely.

“But after all you have done, I hoped only to grant you some boon—Arslan, is something amiss?”

Arslan’s on his feet, and ignoring Alphinaud’s question, makes for the door. He can’t bear thinking about this any longer, so he won’t.

Because what hurts the most is the thought of having to face his tribe once more, knowing that he has spoken. He would not be able to bear it: being welcomed when he has betrayed their most crucial tenet, and deserves no longer what approval they offer him.

So he runs, out of the house and into the night, and finds his way to the Brume. To that spot he used to stand when he was younger, overlooking the churning clouds below.

He lifts his head to look at the stars, training his eyes on their cold light until the ache in his chest fades, and there is nothing left but the wind and the ice and the snow, and the chill settling deep into his bones.


End file.
